Thursday, September 06, 2007

World's Dumbest College Students?

A pair of freshmen at Northeastern University learned a tough lesson before classes even started this semester, when one of them allegedly leaned out the window of his dormitory and yelled something regrettable in earshot of plainclothes police officers.

"If you're looking for weed, my roommate Ferrante has some for sale," Michael R. Emery yelled, according to Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office.

The sales pitch, allegedly made Sunday to a fellow student shouting from a second-floor window at the Hemenway Street residence hall, landed Emery, 18, and his roommate, Matthew J. Ferrante, 18, in a lot of trouble. After their room was searched and officers allegedly found marijuana, smoking accessories and liquor, the pair was arrested, arraigned, and apparently thrown out of school.

"I can tell you that they are no longer students here at Northeastern," said Laura Shea, a school spokeswoman, who declined to comment further.

According to a statement from prosecutors, police went to the second floor of the dormitory after hearing Emery yell and found the door open. In plain view was a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, a shot glass, and a plastic baggie of marijuana, officials said. The officers knocked and identified themselves to Emery, of Haverhill, and Ferrante, of North Andover.

As they spoke to the teens, police spotted another bag of marijuana and a glass pipe, the district attorney's office said.

The officers read the students their rights and received permission to search the room, according to the release. The search yielded eight small bags of marijuana, a larger bag containing three to four ounces of marijuana, hundreds of clear plastic baggies, and a digital scale, the DA's statement said.

The officers also found a grinder, a bong, $1,045 in cash, bottles of of liquor, and a vaporizer, a device that uses heat to release marijuana's intoxicating chemicals but does not burn the plant, officials said.

Outside the window of their room, the students had rigged a pulley system that had been designed to raise and lower items from the room directly overhead. It was not immediately known how the students were using the pulley system, prosecutors said.

Emery and Ferrante were arraigned Tuesday in Roxbury District Court and charged with possession of a class D substance with intent to distribute in a school zone, possession of alcohol by a minor, and conspiracy to violate the state's drug laws. The teens were released without bail and are to return to court Oct. 24.

"It is dispiriting that these young men would take so cavalierly an education that so many young people across the state that play by the rules can't afford," Wark said.

A message left at Emery's parents' home was not returned. Reached by phone yesterday at his parents' home in North Andover, Ferrante said: "I do not want to talk about it."

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